Reading the report into Dominic Raab’s behaviour is a farcical experience. We’ve heard for months about what a bully the outgoing Deputy Prime Minister has been — quite hysterical briefings given to very responsible journalists — but the evidence seemed somewhat limp. He once threw some tomatoes across a table, it was claimed (a claim that has now been dropped). Okay? A misaimed potato would at least have hurt.

Still, an investigation was taking place. We were going to hear about the really bad stuff. The cursing. The insults. The broken furniture. The horse’s head left on a civil servant’s pillow.

Here’s the report and, well — it’s not so much a damp squib as a drenched one. Indeed, the lawyer investigating Raab, Adam Tolley KC, says a lot of nice stuff about the man. Raab, he claims, “is highly intelligent, pays close attention to detail and seeks to make decisions based on evidence”:

He has strong principles and is guided by them in practice. He works assiduously and typically from about 0730 until about 2200, Monday to Thursday. This includes working during the car journey to Westminster and from Westminster to home. Fridays are allocated to constituency work. He usually does extensive work on weekends also. He makes a determined effort to use his working time effectively. He seeks to use meetings with policy officials in order to test the relevant material and make a decision.

Who knew politicians could work so hard. My sympathies to Mrs Raab — who must have sometimes felt a little like a war widow.

The flipside of making such demands of himself is that Mr Raab makes big demands of other people. He’s impatient, Tolley says, and will often interrupt people if he thinks that detail is redundant. Sometimes — and I hope you’re sitting down for this — he interrupts people by “extending his hand directly out towards another person’s face”. Now, interrupting people isn’t nice. It’s an unpleasant thing to do. But this was a man we’ve been told was in his offices for 14+ hours a day. If I had that kind of schedule, I’m sure I’d want people to get to the point as well.

Raab is also a critical person to work for. He “sometimes takes a strong view,” writes Tolley:

…that officials should have been prepared in advance to answer his questions at a meeting and, in the event that they cannot do so, offers largely unconstructive criticism about the matter. A particular phrase used by [Raab] was to complain about the absence of what he referred to as “basic information” or “the basics”.

Saying that people have neglected basic information? God — he’s a regular Buddy Rich! Some of the criticisms made of Mr Raab are downright baffling. He “made a point of requiring a meeting with a policy official,” says Tolley: 

…for the sole purpose of criticising them for their team’s failure to deliver a submission on time and without having requested in advance any extension. There was no underlying urgency.

Okay, I see that some things are more important to do on time than other things. But if you don’t do what you’re meant to do, you can’t complain if you get criticised. “Deadlines” are called “deadlines” for a reason.

Mr Raab, Tolley concludes, never shouted or swore at people and didn’t target individuals. Perhaps there were incidents of people being hung from windows by their ankles that have somehow not emerged — but on the basis of this report, the charge of “bullying” is so absurd that it makes Britain look like a nation made of candy floss. 

Still, I’m not going to form a “Justice for Raab” committee. While “stern” or “abrasive” — the latter being the term that Tolley tends to prefer — sounds like a better description of his conduct than bullying, the plain fact is that it didn’t work. There is no evidence that it made the people working under Raab more effective, and there is some evidence that it made them less so. I’ve never worked in politics but I have been a teacher. Some classes work better if you are a bit “abrasive”, because they have to know when it’s time to knuckle down, but some are more sensitive and need a gentler approach. It would not be “bullying” to raise your voice a bit with the latter kind of students but it wouldn’t get results.

Now, perhaps some of the people working with Raab didn’t want to get results — not by his standards, at least. Raab, Tolley finds, could feel “frustrated that his policy objectives were not being implemented with sufficient commitment” and criticised “obstructiveness”. In a piece for the Telegraph, Raab writes:

This precedent sets the playbook for a small number of officials to target ministers, who negotiate robustly on behalf of the country, pursue bold reforms and persevere in holding civil servants to account.

The problem is that if someone is indeed not committed to achieving your outcomes, what is criticism going to do? That there was no plan to deal with such “obstructiveness” — where it existed — beyond a series of dour meetings is on the government. The Conservatives have had thirteen years in power. This can’t all be some Jim Hackeresque surprise to them.

It would be easier to defend Raab if his demand for high standards had resulted in, well — high standards. But the results — Afghanistan, anyone? — make this impossible to do. He’s not a bully, and it’s pathetic to call him one. But I wish I could be saying that all that hard work and perfectionism had led to any clear accomplishments.